This is a photo of the store room door where the Art room rules are listed for everyone to see. This list of rules was created after much discussion with the grade 4’s last year and on reflection I thought it was such a good list that I’ve used them again for this year.

The last one listed says “In the Art Room we – LET MAGIC HAPPEN!

I often talk to the children about how making art is a sort of partnership between you and the materials. You might be drawing a turtle but when you really look at it , it looks more like an elephant. Well you can fight that, and keep trying for a turtle and you might just end up with an ordinary turtle. But if you go with what the materials are trying to tell you, and you change your drawing into an elephant, you might just end up with the most magnificent elephant you have ever drawn!!! And that is , of course, when the magic happens!

I think this idea helps the children to allow themselves to change and adapt their ideas as they are working and the children love to tell me that magic happened today and explain the development of their ideas into their final product.

I used a thick metallic thread to create these words using a line design alphabet that I devised to use with the Grade 5’s last year when we did a unit on line design. The grade 5’s went from doing simple line designs on paper following a step by step procedure to stitching their own name onto a piece of coloured card using my line design alphabet.It was a very popular unit of work.

And so you don’t think that all we do in the Art room is talk about rules and we don’t have any fun, here is a red monster that Prep C created a week or so ago.

Hi, I'm Shell, Welcome to the Back Art Room Blog which is about my Visual Arts program and its place in Primary Visual Arts education in Victoria, Australia. I teach Visual Arts at Cambridge Primary School in Hoppers Crossing so here you will find examples of my students amazing artworks, all sorts of things that happen in and around my art room, as well as my thoughts on Visual Arts education and whatever else I can squeeze in! I want to reflect on my own teaching and learning and interact, learn from and be inspired by others.

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